PSFK got the chance to visit the new Google Maps powered New York City information center this weekend, and overall it’s a very cool experience. The space has a clean, minimalist feel. It’s a kind of spaceship-modern, mostly white interior interspersed with neat rows of brochures and colorful glowing screens, which come to life with when touched.
The big attraction here are the huge gesture recognition touch screen tables, designed by Local Projects. Guests can use the kiosks to navigate New York City, and create a custom itinerary for their visit. To start the process, users place a disk, (which has an individual machine readable code on the bottom) in the center of the screen. You can then browse an interactive Google map of New York, and look up restaurants, tourist attractions, nightlife or any of the 9 other categories, adding your chosen locations to the disk. When you’re done adding stuff to do, take the disk to the back of the store and place it on a reader for a virtual tour of your itinerary through a huge 3D model of New York City. You can also have your program emailed, texted or printed out for further review. Coded brochures are also available which activate video tours and recommendations by celebrity residents of New York.
A staff member reported that visitors are taking to the high tech kiosks with ease, which isn’t surprising -the interface is very intuitive. And besides a little lag time, we found the tables to be quite responsive. On the downside, all the content is curated, and the system is walled off from the internet leaving the more curious tourist on their own to dig deeper for information. All-in-all, definitely worth a visit whether you’re looking for local guidance, or just into new technology.
The information center is located at 810 Seventh Avenue, between 52nd and 53rd Streets, or check out nycgo.com
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